President Donald Trump hailed the first major rewrite of the nation's criminal justice sentencing laws in a generation. Lawmakers reached agreement this week on the bipartisan First Step Act, but it still needs to be voted on by Congress. (Nov. 14)
AP

It is not often that you see the American Civil Liberties Union and President Donald Trump on the same side of an issue. But when it comes to the latest criminal justice reform measure, as the saying goes, “politics makes strange bedfellows.”

It appears Congress could pass the bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation called the “First Step Act.”

The bill would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for certain offenses and expand the crimes for which judges can avoid giving mandatory minimum sentences.

It would also provide inmates with incentives to participate in educational and vocational programs while in prison by allowing inmates to reduce their sentences for doing so. The idea behind this provision is that inmates who get the training and education they need are substantially less likely to commit another crime after being released.

Under the bill, the use of home detention and electronic monitoring would be increased and the bill would provide more transitional programs for those being released from prison.

The Trump administration’s support for criminal justice reform is not unprecedented in recent years. In 2010, the Barack Obama administration supported The Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the absurd and unfair disparities between sentences for crack cocaine compared with sentences for powder cocaine.

There is some pushback to the legislation from so-called “tough on crime” types who feel the bill is too lenient and from prison reform advocates who feel the bill does not go far enough. However, the bill appears to enjoy bipartisan support from people who recognize we must address this serious issue, even if it takes several incremental measures to do so.

Newt Gingrich attacked the “lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key-crowd” and said reforms are needed in part because of “misguided crime-prevention efforts that I backed as a Republican leader in Congress during the 1990s.”

Gingrich’s comments echo those of former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, who recently expressed deep regret about having pushed for more and more incarceration while he was governor. Thompson said: “I regret it because, at the time it was, you know we thought it was the right thing to do. Lock 'em up and get the bad guys off the streets and lock 'em up.” But Thompson said bluntly, “we lock up too many people for too long.”

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, has argued the United States has an “under-incarceration problem.” This statement is laughable, especially because the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country on Earth. With just 5 percent of the world’s population, we incarcerate 25 percent of the world’s prison population. From 1970 to 2005, the prison population in the United States rose by a staggering 700 percent.

Empirical data demonstrate that more incarceration does not lead to less crime and that longer incarceration can, in fact, increase crime. In 2017, the Open Philanthropy Project released a comprehensive review of a large body of research on the issue. The research found that releasing people early from prison does not lead to more crime and that holding people in prison for longer periods of time tends to increase a person’s tendency to commit a crime upon release.

In Wisconsin, Gov.-elect Tony Evers campaigned on bringing criminal justice reform to the state, including reducing the state’s prison population substantially for non-violent offenders. Evers recently announced the formation of a panel to address criminal justice reform.

It is in the state system, not the federal system, where most of the nation’s 2.1 million inmates are housed. And therefore, it is on the state level (not the federal level) where criminal justice reform can have the most impact.

Many states are passing sweeping criminal justice reform measures that are bolder than the First Step Act.

States such as Texas, New York, South Carolina, California, New Jersey and Michigan are taking a fiscally responsible approach by reducing their prison populations or closing prisons with virtually no negative effect on public safety.

States that have implemented these policies for the longest periods of time, such as New York, New Jersey and California, have many years of evidence and data to prove that reducing prison populations and closing prisons has not caused spikes in crime nor has doing so had a negative effect on public safety.

Casey Hoff(Photo11: Provided)

The First Step Act is not a panacea on criminal justice reform. But it is, as the name suggests, a first step. Smart criminal justice reform measures can ultimately reduce draconian sentences, save enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars and make our communities safer.